MASS media, SPANISH politics & government, POLITICAL surveys, ELECTIONS, VOTING research, POLITICAL news coverage
Abstract
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Caballé, Adrià, Grima, Pere, and Marco-Almagro, Lluís
Subjects
*ELECTION coverage, *ACCURACY in journalism, *PUBLIC opinion polls, *ELECTIONS, SPANISH politics & government
Abstract
This paper analyses the predictions of the election results for the Spanish Parliament published in the main Spanish newspapers. To gauge their degree of accuracy, the distance between the predictions and the actual results was defined and later assessed by comparing it with that of the so-called 'perfect poll'. This 'perfect poll' was generated by a simulation using the proportions of votes actually obtained by each party. Other issues related to the published polls are also analysed, such as the relationship between sample size and estimation quality, and between the error made (by excess or defect) for a party and the ideological affinity between that party and the newspaper publishing the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]